A fragment of continental crust has been postulated to underlie the young plume-related lavas of the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius based on the recovery of Proterozoic zircons from basaltic beach sands. Here we document ...

A significant number of new palaeomagnetic poles have become available since the last time a compilation was made (assembled in 2005, published in 2008) to indicate to us that a new and significantly expanded set of tables ...

We defined a new global moving hot spot reference frame (GMHRF), using a comprehensive set of radiometric dates from arguably the best‐studied hot spot tracks, refined plate circuit reconstructions, a new plate polygon ...

The equipotential figures of Earth (residual geoid), and of Mars (areoid) are characterized by pairs of elevated and pairs of depressed antipodal equatorial regions. Elevated regions of the residual geoid lie vertically ...

The relation between gravity anomalies, topography and volcanism can yield important insights about the internal dynamics of planets. From the power spectra of gravity and topography on Earth, Venus and Mars we infer that ...

The Laccadive–Chagos Ridge and Southern Mascarene Plateau in the north-central and western Indian Ocean, respectively, are thought to be volcanic chains formed above the Réunion mantle plume1 over the past 65.5 million ...

Earth’s spin axis follows the maximum moment of inertia axis of mantle convection, with some delay due to adjustment of the rotational bulge. Here we compute this axis for geodynamic models based on subduction history, ...

Gondwana was an enormous supertarrane. At its peak, it represented a landmass of about 100 × 106 km2 in size, corresponding to approximately 64% of all land areas today. Gondwana assembled in the Middle Cambrian, merged ...

We present geodynamic models featuring mantle plumes that are almost exclusively created at the margins of large thermo‐chemical piles in the lowermost mantle. The models are based on subduction locations and fluxes inferred ...

It is generally believed that subduction of lithospheric slabs is a major contribution to thermal heterogeneity in Earth's entire mantle and provides a main driving force for mantle flow. Mantle structure can, on the one ...